How do you deal with bike bans as a mountain biker? It's a question I'm confronted with again and again throughout the bike season, but especially recently on a trip through Tenerife. The entire island is riddled with prohibition signs; single trails are all no-go zones. As a mountain biker, I had to decide between the reverent belief in authority and the anarchic rebelliousness.

You don't have to fly to the Canary Islands for this dilemma, a trip to Baden-Württemberg, Appenzell or Austria will suffice for this dilemma. Do I accept the bans or do I ignore them?

Rules are important

The argument in favor of a belief in authority is that laws should be obeyed as a matter of principle. Thanks to them, we structure our society and enable orderly interaction. In mountain biking, however, there is the problem that many bans are based on ideology. People simply don't want mountain bikers on trails. For no reason, period. Just like on Tenerife. Here you can spend days on the trails without a mouse leg, and there are no wild animals on the island. There is no obvious reason to exclude mountain bikers from the trails here. This raises the question for us: do I go back home or do I just deal with the flood of prohibition signs?

No question: rules are there to be obeyed. However, nothing changes for mountain bikers between Tenerife and Tyrol if they lawfully switch to forest roads or cycle paths. On the contrary, such behavior encourages opponents to enforce further bans. After all, they also seek the path of least resistance.

The opposite way to believing in the authorities is to ignore the bans. In doing so, mountain bikers risk heated discussions and heated fronts in addition to parking tickets. This is where many Austrian mountain bikers currently find themselves: they want to avoid the image of trail anarchists in order to continue to be taken seriously as a discussion partner. Only to be ripped off after all, according to pointed tongues.

Pressure is needed in the cauldron

The reality, however, is clear: mountain bikers haven't cared about the many trail bans for a long time. A look at the Heatmap from Strava clearly shows this. Here it is obvious that bans are only followed if they make sense or if a worthy alternative route is available. This is no different on Tenerife. Mountain bikers are by no means incorrigible rebels; they often simply lack an alternative for practising the sport legally.

At the same time, non-compliance with the bans leads to visible pressure to use the roads. This is important, because if the pressure remains high, it will lead to change. The sport of mountain biking will not be served if we retreat to the forest roads with our tails between our legs. If we mountain bikers nod off the ideological and incomprehensible bans, this will at best lead to a more consensual mood, but at the same time to even more restrictions. Because the pressure in the cauldron is not high enough.